


A Noble Companion

by Gemmiel



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Angst, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Original Character - Freeform, donna in flashbacks, everyone needs a kitty, ten/donna in flashbacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-17
Updated: 2014-11-17
Packaged: 2018-02-25 18:34:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2632028
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gemmiel/pseuds/Gemmiel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Doctor acquires a new companion after he loses Donna.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Noble Companion

**Author's Note:**

> Previously posted elsewhere under the name EllyF. Inspired by the picture.

[](http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/444/tencattitle.jpg/)

"What about you now? Who have you got? I mean, all those friends of yours..."

The Doctor stood in the pouring rain and looked at Wilf Mott, haloed by the warm light of a home where he was no longer welcome. "They've all got someone else," he answered. "Still... that's fine. I'm fine."

But he was anything but fine, and he suspected Wilf knew it. The old man looked at him keenly for a minute.

"Hang on a mo'," he said. "I'll be right back."

He disappeared into the house, leaving the Doctor standing there in the rain. Not that it mattered. Nothing mattered, not really. He thought glumly that he might as well be standing out here in the rain as sitting alone in the TARDIS.

Wilf rematerialized at the door, walked down the steps, and thrust something small and dark at him. "There. Take her with you."

The Doctor held out his hands automatically, and discovered he had a small, warm handful of buzzing fur. A black-and-white kitten. His eyes widened, and he tried to hand it back to Wilf.

"I don't really like cats. Besides, I don't keep pets. No place for them on the TARDIS."

"Cats aren't pets," Wilf said. "They keep _you._ Y'see, Sylvia's old cat Duchess had kittens, and this is the last of the lot. Needs a good home, and I reckon the TARDIS is as good as it gets. Anyway, you shouldn't be alone, Doctor. 'Tisn't good for a man to be all alone. Trust me. I know."

"But--"

"Go on," Wilf said, giving him a little shove into the street. "Take her home."

Automatically, the Doctor brought the little ball of fur to his chest to shield her from the worst of the rain. Wilf disappeared into the house and shut the door, and unable to think what else he could do-- because he surely wasn't about to just drop the poor kitten in the street, and he couldn't knock on the Noble door again without incurring Sylvia's wrath-- the Doctor went toward the TARDIS, opened the door, and carried the kitten inside.

Inside the TARDIS, he sent the time machine into the vortex, then dried off the kitten best he could, and looked for someplace to put her. He'd left his long brown coat flung over one of the seats. He placed her down on it, and she immediately began to knead it with her tiny claws.

"Oi," he said. "Watch it. Janis Joplin gave me that coat, you know."

The kitten was profoundly unimpressed by his name-dropping. She kneaded happily for a few moments, then curled into a little ball and buzzed herself to sleep. He sighed, shrugging off his wet suit jacket and tossing it over a strut. He couldn't quite think what to do next. Left to his own devices, he might just have sat down and stared blankly at the whirring Time Rotor, but... well, he had a new passenger, and she needed attending to.

Food. She'd need food. Water. And a litterbox. He headed off to the storeroom to see what he could find.

*****

Later that evening, he brought her to his bedroom. Not because he particularly wanted a little ball of fur underfoot, but because she was very tiny, and would probably get into trouble if he left her alone. It was entirely possible for her to get lost for good in the TARDIS' vast interior, and until she knew her way around, he'd have to keep a careful eye on her. He placed her into a small basket he'd found in a storeroom, then changed into pyjamas and lay down in his bed.

It seemed very empty, and very cold. He'd grown accustomed to a lot of ginger hair spread all over the pillow, as well as Donna's running litany of complaints: _Oi, Spaceman, can't you get your elbow out of my back? It's so sharp you could use it for a tin opener. Quit your bloody snoring-- sounds like there's bagpipes in your conk. And how **does** someone so skinny manage to take up three-quarters of the bed, anyway?_

He remembered the acerbic words she'd never really meant, but he also remembered cuddling with her before sleep, his arm wrapped around her, his nose pressed into her hair. The memories made his eyes sting with tears.

He wanted to pull the covers over his head and try to forget his pain and loss in slumber, but something was making a very irritating noise, and it wouldn't let him go to sleep. The kitten was crying. Apparently she didn't care for the basket.

"There's no point in whingeing about it," he said drowsily. "You'll get used to it."

The kitten disagreed. Quite loudly, for such a small creature.

"Look," he grumbled, "I know you're used to sleeping with your mum. I've got used to having someone else in my bed, too. But we're just going to have to get used to being on our own, all right?"

The kitten felt it was not all right, and made that extremely clear. The Doctor groaned.

"Are you going to carry on like that all night?"

The kitten expressed a very sincere intention of doing precisely that. 

"Fine," the Doctor said between his teeth. He reached over the side of the bed, groped, and picked up the small and fuzzy creature. He put her on the bed, next to him.

"Now don't crowd me," he admonished her. "I'm tired of being crowded every night. Was looking forward to having a bed all to myself for once, actually."

The kitten was unimpressed by his cranky tone, or perhaps she knew he was lying. She moved toward him, curled up against his chest, and began to buzz again.

He patted her gently, closed his eyes, and went to sleep.

*****

In the morning, he fed the cat first, because she was wailing dolefully. He was a little rusty on his cat language skills, but she seemed to be explaining to him that no one had fed her in the past week, or possibly the past month. He knew perfectly well she was exaggerating, but... well, she was a growing girl. She wouldn't be tiny forever, and she needed calories in order to develop properly. So he fed her, then made himself a slice of toast.

Lately he'd got used to having a proper breakfast with Donna-- bangers and eggs, most days, sometimes with bubble'n'squeak for a treat-- and she'd have smacked him if he'd tried to face the day on a piece of dry toast. But today he just couldn't be arsed to care. He nibbled at his toast dispiritedly. The kitten jumped up into the chair across the table from him and looked at him.

"Oi," he grumbled. "That's _her_ chair."

Well, it had been her chair. It was no one's chair now. Might as well let the cat have it as let it sit there empty. He sighed, and put down the toast, half-eaten.

"What am I supposed to call you?" he asked.

The cat gazed at him with her seagreen eyes, and didn't deign to reply.

"You're a Noble," he said. "Just as mouthy and opinionated as the lot of them, too. And besides, your mum was a Duchess. I s'pose I'll call you Lady, you being noble and all."

The cat didn't object, so Lady she became.

*****

Within a week, the cat had let him know her proper title was henceforth to be Countess Fuzzy Paws, Glorious Destroyer of Vermin, Courageous Explorer of the Vast Reaches of the TARDIS, and Unquestioned Mistress of the Time Vortex. When he objected that her chosen name was quite a bloody mouthful, she graciously permitted him to continue calling her Lady.

She also decreed that the bed was hers, but that he would be permitted to continue on in his capacity as Warm Object to Cuddle Against. He didn't argue. He rather suspected Donna's thought processes had been similar-- the TARDIS had become hers the day she moved in, and he'd been reduced in rank to a mere pilot. And when she'd decided the two of them were going to sleep together, he'd discovered he had no say in the matter. Not that he'd tried very hard to object, really.

He'd got used to being pushed around by a Noble, and had even grown to like it. The cat wasn't a replacement for Donna, of course, but... well, she was someone to talk to. And in her own tiny way, she was just as bossy as Donna had been.

After a few days of drifting aimlessly through the Vortex, he grew bored, and landed on Ixpidia, where he helped the local people defeat a terrorist cell that had tried to blow up the capital city. That evening, he returned to the TARDIS, and the kitten glared at him. It didn't take Time Lord language skills to decipher what she was saying. A human could have understood her readily enough.

_About time you got back. Where's my dinner?_

"Hallo to you too," he said, scooping her up and cuddling her against his chest. She purred.

_I may possibly have missed you, just a trifle._

"I missed you too," he answered, carrying her down the corridor to the galley. It had been a rough day, with people firing lasers at him, and bombs going off every which way. Once or twice, he'd caught himself thinking, _Why bother getting out of the way? Donna's gone. What's the bloody point?_

But the point was that he was a pet owner now, and that was a responsibility he had to take seriously. Not that he was worried about the kitten starving to death. He'd already set the TARDIS to return to Chiswick automatically and notify Wilf if anything happened to him, and he'd also created an automated system to feed the kitten and care for her in case he was thrown in jail for a while (and it was almost a sure bet that sooner or later he'd be thrown in jail for a while). So if he couldn't return to the TARDIS one day, Lady would be taken care of.

But Wilf probably wouldn't let Lady sleep in his bed, and he wouldn't be able to buy her the particular sort of kitten chow he'd obtained on J'S'Treska, which she was ridiculously fond of. She wouldn't be as happy with Wilf as she was with him. The TARDIS was her home, and she depended on him to take proper care of her.

So for the kitten's sake, he had to watch his back.

He cooked himself a decent dinner after he'd fed the cat, and then returned to the console room, Lady trailing along behind him. He stretched out on the floor to do some tinkering, and the kitten jumped up onto the console to observe, or possibly to supervise.

"Oi," he complained. "Off of that. You'll get cat hair in the temporal manipulator, and then who knows where the hell we'll wind up next time we try to land?"

The kitten purred, and refused to move. He didn't push the issue. Wilf had said, _Cats aren't pets-- they keep you._ And he'd been right. 

He belonged to the cat now. But he didn't really mind.

It was nice to belong to someone, even if it was just a cat.

*****

"You are driving me _barmy._ "

A few weeks later, Lady sat on the galley table, watching him as he poured kitten chow into a bowl. Her eyes were large and innocent, but he wasn't fooled. She knew perfectly well what he was ranting about.

"You leave hair everywhere," he said. "You've been clawing the wood panelling in the library, and I think the TARDIS is about ready to chuck you out the front doors. You've appropriated my coat for napping, and that is so not what it's for. And you sicked up in the temporal manipulator. Rassilon only knows if we'll ever be able to land in the 1970s again."

The kitten meowed, and he shrugged. "I agree, that's not a big loss. But the point is that you're three and a half pounds of wanton destruction. Sort of like a tornado with fur. And besides, you're bloody useless. All you do is lie around all day-- except when you're destroying the furniture or ripping up the carpets or sicking up hairballs. I'm not even sure why I'm keeping you. What are you good for, anyway?"

She fixed him with her huge seagreen eyes, and he sighed. The answer was clear: _**I'm** keeping **you.** Not that you're much use, either. Hurry up with that food._

He put the bowl down in front of her, and she began greedily gobbling her food, in a very un-Countess-like way. He stood there, watching her, and his mind drifted back to happier times. He remembered Donna standing at this very table, shouting at him: _You... are... **bonkers,** Spaceman!_

He couldn't quite remember why she'd been so annoyed with him. His habit of eating mayonnaise straight out of the jar, maybe, or his occasional effort at culinary experimentation when it was his turn to cook (why she hadn't enjoyed the peanut butter he'd mixed into her scrambled eggs one day, he still couldn't fathom). At any rate, she'd yelled-- hardly a novelty on her part-- and he'd waited quietly for her to finish, and then asked her if she'd wanted breakfast. 

She'd sighed, and rolled her eyes.

 _You may be a daft alien,_ she'd said with a faint smile, _but you're **my** daft alien._

He knew he wasn't the easiest bloke to live with. If Donna had managed to put up with him all that time, he reckoned he could put up with three and a half pounds of pure, unadulterated destruction.

"You may be a tornado with fur," he said, running a hand down Lady's back, "but you're _my_ tornado with fur."

She purred.

*****

They had their first major argument over a chair in the library. The Doctor had walked into the room with the intention of sitting in the big chair next to the fireplace-- which happened to have been Donna's favourite seat-- and doing some reading. The kitten was already there, curled up and looking very contented in the flickering light of the fire.

"Move it," he said.

The kitten lifted her head and gazed at him through half-open eyes. Her expression said, _You are failing to show due deference to your ruler._

The Doctor wasn't in the mood to defer to a four-pound kitten. He'd put in another hard day saving yet another planet, slogging through mud and swamps and marshes, and he wanted the small comfort of sitting in _her_ favourite chair and reading one of _her_ favourite books. He reached down, with the intention of picking up Countess Fuzzy Paws and removing her forcibly-- and she hissed and swiped at him with outstretched claws. 

He yanked his hand back with a startled yelp, and looked in astonished fury at the red furrows on the back of his hand.

"Bloody _hell!_ "

Her Ladyship seemed to realise from the tone of his voice that he was angry, because she fluffed up her tail, leapt from the chair, and fled at top speed. He watched her go with mingled irritation and guilt. He wouldn't have minded sitting there next to the fire with her curled up in his lap. But she always had to have things her way.

He remembered a similar battle with Donna, months before. He'd grumbled that the chair next to the fire was _his,_ and he'd thank her to move her arse out of it, right _now_. She'd slammed her book shut and glared at him.

_What the **hell** is your problem, Spaceman? This ship is the size of London. Can't you find your own chair?_

_That **is** my chair!_ he'd snapped, knowing he was being childish, but unable to stop himself. _I've been sitting there for **centuries,** damn it!_

 _Well, then,_ she'd said sweetly, opening her book again and beginning to read, _you've sat here quite enough. It's my turn._

He'd stalked out of the library, slamming the doors behind him, and hadn't cooled off until she'd caught him in the corridor later and snogged the hell out of him. Donna had had a way of managing him. But he hadn't minded being managed.

In fact, he missed it. 

He missed _her._

He sat down in the chair heavily, leaned his head back, and closed his eyes. His eyelids stung, but he refused to let the tears fall. He slumped there, breathing in harsh, irregular gasps, his shoulders shaking with the effort of holding in his sobs.

Ten minutes later, something small and fuzzy jumped into his lap, curled up, and began purring. _I've decided to forgive you, even though you don't deserve it._

He didn't open his eyes. He stroked her warm, soft fur, uncertain which of them he was comforting.

"Thank you," he muttered in a strangled voice.

*****

One morning, two months after he'd lost Donna, he decided not to get up. He stayed in bed, curled up in a little ball of misery beneath the covers. He missed her. He missed her so fiercely that he just couldn't cope any more.

The Countess tolerated this odd behaviour for a few moments, but then she began to very gently bat at him. He could feel her paws through the coverlet.

"Go 'way," he mumbled.

She batted, and meowed, very softly. 

"No, Lady. I'm not getting up. I don't want to get up. I don't want to feed you. I don't want to eat. I just want to be left alone."

The TARDIS would feed the cat if he didn't. Lady didn't need him, not really. No one needed him. 

She kept on batting, and he refused to budge. Eventually she hopped off the bed, and he knew she'd gone to find food. But fifteen minutes later, she was back, batting at him and meowing pitifully.

"Leave me _alone._ "

The kitten stopped batting. A moment later, he felt her burrowing in beneath the covers. She cuddled up next to his chest, warm and fluffy and oddly comforting. He couldn't quite resist. He patted her gently, and she began purring, as always. _Is something wrong?_

"I'm all right," he mumbled with a sigh. "I'm always all right."

In his head, he heard Donna's voice: _Is **all right** special Time Lord code for **really not all right at all?**_

Lady curled close. She wasn't fooled, any more than Donna had been. She buzzed, a gentle, reassuring, familiar sound. _You're not all right. But maybe this will help._

Strangely enough, it did.

*****

He allowed himself to spend a day in quiet inactivity, curled up beneath the covers with the Countess, thinking about everything he and Donna had done together. He hadn't realised how badly he'd needed to just let himself grieve for what he'd lost. He'd very much needed a day of sorrow and reflection, a day spent indulging in fond memories.

But inactivity had never really suited him, and he popped out of bed at the proper hour the next morning, feeling a bit better. After feeding Lady and himself, showering, and changing, he headed for the console room. Lady trailed along behind him, then leapt onto the console and sat watching him.

She meowed. _Where are we going today?_

"I don't know," he said. "That's the fun part, isn't it? Never knowing where you're headed."

He paused, and thought about what he'd said. _Fun._ He'd been staggering beneath such a heavy weight of sorrow for the past two months that he'd almost forgotten that his ramblings through the universe were supposed to be fun. He tried to help people, to save people, to protect those who needed defending-- but he also tried to have fun. And since he'd lost Donna, he'd almost forgotten how.

Donna, he thought, would want him to continue having fun. In fact, if she saw him moping, she'd most likely smack his shoulder and tell him to get a grip. She'd always thrown herself into their wanderings with exuberant, childlike joy, after all. He remembered her delight at stepping out onto an alien world for the first time, the way she'd squealed happily, and he'd laughed and said, _I know what it’s like. Everything you’re feeling right now. The fear, the joy, the wonder...I get that!_

 _After all this time?_ she'd asked, and he'd nodded.

_Yeah. Why do you think I keep going?_

He sighed. Even though Donna was gone, the fear and the joy and the wonder were still out there, if he was willing to look for them. The universe was still a glorious, mysterious place. That hadn't changed.

What had changed was that Donna was gone. But moping wouldn't bring her back. He'd taken her memories to save her, and his first priority was, and always would be, keeping her safe. He couldn't stop traveling, but from now on, he'd travel alone.

Lady meowed, reminding him that he wasn't entirely alone. A cat wasn't a substitute for a person, of course, and no one, whether feline or humanoid, could ever replace Donna anyway. But Lady was nevertheless someone to come home to at night, someone to take care of, someone he mattered to. He was hers.

He reached out to touch her soft fur. She buzzed, and bumped her head up against his hand. He patted her with one hand, and threw a lever with the other.

"Let's keep going," he said softly, and sent the TARDIS hurtling towards its next destination.

_-The End-_


End file.
